An important hurdle has been crossed on the way to achieve the goal of establishing the UGA, Université Grenoble Alpes, as a world class research and innovation university. The UGA is a conglomerate of universities and research institutions with a   multi-disciplinary training programme in Grenoble and in the Alps region. The French Ministry of Education and Research has announced that the Idex (Excellence Initiative) pre-project of UGA is one out of three pre-projects that has been selected among 7 other applications. This paves the way to the submission of the full project which will be reviewed by an international panel whose results will be made public in January 2016. In case of success this date will mark a new beginning for the new institution and will be a major boon for all the laboratories involved. For LAPTh this will reinforce our contribution to the Excellence Laboratory Initiative (Labex) Enigmass and build upon  our efforts in building a strong collaboration with the Grenoble laboratories. 

More details on the UGA Idex project can be found here (in French).

The project stands on excellent scientific foundations. For example, 1 out of  5 inhabitants in the Grenoble Alpes region are, in one way or the other, involved with research and innovation, see this short clip .